arXiv subjects

T. Erben

Publications and source records attributed to T. Erben.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2008

CARS: the CFHTLS-Archive-Research Survey; I. Five-band multi-colour data from 37 sq. deg. CFHTLS-Wide observations

We present the CFHTLS-Archive-Research Survey (CARS). It is a virtual multi-colour survey based on public archive images from the CFHT-Legacy-Survey. Our main scientific interests in CARS are optical searches for galaxy clusters from low to high redshift and their subsequent study with photometric and weak-gravitational lensing techniques. As a first step of the project we present multi-colour catalogues from 37 sq. degrees of the CFHTLS-Wide component. Our aims are to create astrometrically and photometrically well calibrated co-added images. Second goal are five-band (u*, g', r', i', z') multi-band catalogues with an emphasis on reliable estimates for object colours. These are subsequently used for photometric redshift estimates. The article explains in detail data processing, multi-colour catalogue creation and photometric redshift estimation. Furthermore we apply a novel technique, based on studies of the angular galaxy cross-correlation function, to quantify the reliability of photo-z's. The accuracy of our high-confidence photo-z sample (10-15 galaxies per sq. arcmin) is estimated to $σ_{Δ_z/(1+z)}\approx 0.04-0.05$ up to i'<24 with typically only 1-3% outliers. Interested users can obtain access to our data by request to the authors.

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arXiv2008

Kinematic modeling of disk galaxies III. The warped "Spindle" NGC 2685

This is the third of a series of papers in which the structure and kinematics of disk galaxies is studied. Employing direct tilted-ring fits to the data cube as introduced in Paper I, we perform an analysis of the "Spindle" galaxy NGC 2685, previously regarded as two-ringed polar ring galaxy. Deep HI and optical (i'-band) observations are presented. The HI observations strongly suggest that the gaseous structure of NGC 2685 does not consist of two separate mutually inclined regions, but forms a coherent, extremely warped disk, the appearance of two rings being due to projection effects. By comparing the HI total-intensity maps with the optical image we demonstrate that at large radii a faint stellar disk is well aligned with the outer HI disk. The shape of the dust-lanes obscuring the NE part of the inner stellar body indicates that also at smaller radii NGC 2685 possesses a disk containing gas, dust, and stars in which the various constituents are aligned. At smaller radii, this disk is kinematically decoupled from the central stellar body. Hence, in the region of the bright, central stellar body, NGC 2685 appears to consist of two disks that share a common centre, but have different orientation: a bright stellar lenticular body apparently devoid of dust and gas, and a heavily warped low-surface brightness disk containing stars, gas and dust. The low-surface-brightness disk changes its orientation gradually and at large radii assumes the orientation of the central stellar S0 disk. Since, according to our analysis, the intrinsic orientation of the low-surface-brightness disk changes through 70 degrees, the gaseous disk is coherent, and is at no radius orientated perpendicularly with respect to the central stellar body, NGC 2685 is likely not a classical polar-ring galaxy.

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arXiv2008

The mass distribution of RX J1347-1145 from strong lensing

High resolution HST/ACS images of the galaxy cluster RX J1347-1145 have enabled us to identify several new multiple image candidates in the cluster, including a 5 image system with a central image. The multiple images allow us to construct an accurate 2-dimensional mass map of the central part of the cluster. The modelling of the cluster mass includes the most prominent cluster galaxies modelled as truncated isothermal spheres and a smooth halo component that is described with 2 parametric profiles. The mass reconstruction is done using a Markov chain Monte Carlo method that provides us with a total projected mass density as well as estimates for the parameters of interest and their respective errors. The mass profile is in reasonable agreement with previous mass estimates based on the X-ray emission from the hot intra-cluster gas, however the X-ray mass estimates are systematically lower than what we obtain with gravitational lensing.

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arXiv2007

ARCRAIDER I: Detailed optical and X-ray analysis of the cooling flow cluster Z3146

We present a detailed analysis of the medium redshift (z=0.2906) galaxy cluster Z3146 which is part of the ongoing ARCRAIDER project, a systematic search for gravitational arcs in massive clusters of galaxies. The analysis of Z3146 is based on deep optical wide field observations in the B, V and R bands obtained with the WFI@ESO2.2m, and shallow archival WFPC2@HST taken with the F606W filter, which are used for strong as well as weak lensing analyses. Additionally we have used publicly available XMM/Newton observations for a detailed X-ray analysis of Z3146. Both methods, lensing and X-ray, were used to determine the dynamical state and to estimate the total mass. We also identified four gravitational arc candidates. We find this cluster to be in a relaxed state, which is confirmed by a large cooling flow with nominal ~1600M_\odot per year, regular galaxy density and light distributions and a regular shape of the weak lensing mass reconstruction. The mass content derived with the different methods agrees well within 25% at r_{200}=1661 h_{70}^{-1}kpc indicating a velocity dispersion of σ_v=869^{+124}_{-153}km/s.

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arXiv2007

BLOX: The Bonn Lensing, Optical, and X-ray selected galaxy clusters -- I. Cluster catalog construction

The mass function of galaxy clusters is an important cosmological probe. Differences in the selection method could potentially lead to biases when determining the mass function. From the optical and X-ray data of the XMM-Newton Follow-Up Survey, we obtained a sample of galaxy cluster candidates using weak gravitational lensing, the optical Postman matched filter method, and a search for extended X-ray sources. We developed our weak-lensing search criteria by testing the performance of the aperture mass statistic on realistic ray-tracing simulations matching our survey parameters and by comparing two filter functions. We find that the dominant noise source for our survey is shape noise at almost all significance levels and that spurious cluster detections due to projections of large-scale structures are negligible, except possibly for highly significantly detected peaks. Our full cluster catalog has 155 cluster candidates, 116 found with the Postman matched filter, 59 extended X-ray sources, and 31 shear selected potential clusters. Most of these cluster candidates were not previously known. The present catalog will be a solid foundation for studying possible selection effects in either method.

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arXiv2007

Cosmic shear analysis of archival HST/ACS data: I. Comparison of early ACS pure parallel data to the HST/GEMS Survey

This is the first paper of a series describing our measurement of weak lensing by large-scale structure using archival observations from the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). In this work we present results from a pilot study testing the capabilities of the ACS for cosmic shear measurements with early parallel observations and presenting a re-analysis of HST/ACS data from the GEMS survey and the GOODS observations of the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS). We describe our new correction scheme for the time-dependent ACS PSF based on observations of stellar fields. This is currently the only technique which takes the full time variation of the PSF between individual ACS exposures into account. We estimate that our PSF correction scheme reduces the systematic contribution to the shear correlation functions due to PSF distortions to < 2*10^{-6} for galaxy fields containing at least 10 stars. We perform a number of diagnostic tests indicating that the remaining level of systematics is consistent with zero for the GEMS and GOODS data confirming the success of our PSF correction scheme. For the parallel data we detect a low level of remaining systematics which we interpret to be caused by a lack of sufficient dithering of the data. Combining the shear estimate of the GEMS and GOODS observations using 96 galaxies arcmin^{-2} with the photometric redshift catalogue of the GOODS-MUSIC sample, we determine a local single field estimate for the mass power spectrum normalisation sigma_{8,CDFS}=0.52^{+0.11}_{-0.15} (stat) +/- 0.07 (sys) (68% confidence assuming Gaussian cosmic variance) at fixed Omega_m=0.3 for a LambdaCDM cosmology. We interpret this exceptionally low estimate to be due to a local under-density of the foreground structures in the CDFS.

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arXiv2007

The Garching-Bonn Deep Survey (GaBoDS) Wide-Field-Imaging Reduction Pipeline

We introduce our publicly available Wide-Field-Imaging reduction pipeline THELI. The procedures applied for the efficient pre-reduction and astrometric calibration are presented. A special emphasis is put on the methods applied to the photometric calibration. As a test case the reduction of optical data from the ESO Deep Public Survey including the WFI-GOODS data is described. The end-products of this project are now available via the ESO archive Advanced Data Products section.

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arXiv2006

GaBoDS: The Garching-Bonn Deep Survey VIII. Lyman-break galaxies in the ESO Deep Public Survey

Aims. The clustering properties of a large sample of U-dropouts are investigated and compared to very precise results for B-dropouts from other studies to identify a possible evolution from z=4 to z=3. Methods. A population of ~8800 candidates for star-forming galaxies at z=3 is selected via the well-known Lyman-break technique from a large optical multicolour survey (the ESO Deep Public Survey). The selection efficiency, contamination rate, and redshift distribution of this population are investigated by means of extensive simulations. Photometric redshifts are estimated for every Lyman-break galaxy (LBG) candidate from its UBVRI photometry yielding an empirical redshift distribution. The measured angular correlation function is deprojected and the resulting spatial correlation lengths and slopes of the correlation function of different subsamples are compared to previous studies. Results. By fitting a simple power law to the correlation function we do not see an evolution in the correlation length and the slope from other studies at z=4 to our study at z=3. In particular, the dependence of the slope on UV-luminosity similar to that recently detected for a sample of B-dropouts is confirmed also for our U-dropouts. For the first time number statistics for U-dropouts are sufficient to clearly detect a departure from a pure power law on small scales down to ~2" reported by other groups for B-dropouts.

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arXiv2006

GaBoDS: The Garching-Bonn Deep Survey: VII. Probing galaxy bias using weak gravitational lensing

[ABRIDGED] The weak gravitational lensing effect is used to infer matter density fluctuations within the field-of-view of the Garching-Bonn Deep Survey (GaBoDS). This information is employed for a statistical comparison of the galaxy distribution to the total matter distribution. The result of this comparison is expressed by means of the linear bias factor, b, the ratio of density fluctuations, and the correlation factor $r$ between density fluctuations. The total galaxy sample is divided into three sub-samples using R-band magnitudes and the weak lensing analysis is applied separately for each sub-sample. Together with the photometric redshifts from the related COMBO-17 survey we estimate the typical mean redshifts of these samples with $\bar{z}=0.35, 0.47, 0.61$, respectively. For all three samples, a slight galaxy anti-bias, b~0.8+-0.1, on scales of a few Mpc/h is found; the bias factor shows evidence for a slight scale-dependence. The correlation between galaxy and (dark) matter distribution is high, r~0.6+-0.2, indicating a non-linear or/and stochastic biasing relation between matter and galaxies. Between the three samples no significant evolution with redshift is found.

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arXiv2006

GaBoDS: The Garching-Bonn Deep Survey: VI. Cosmic shear analysis

Aims. We present a cosmic shear analysis and data validation of 15 square degree high-quality R-band data of the Garching-Bonn Deep Survey obtained with the Wide Field Imager of the MPG/ESO 2.2m telescope. Methods. We measure the two-point shear correlation functions to calculate the aperture mass dispersion. Both statistics are used to perform the data quality control. Combining the cosmic shear signal with a photometric redshift distribution of a galaxy sub-sample obtained from two square degree of UBVRI-band observations of the Deep Public Survey we determine constraints for the matter density Omega_m, the mass power spectrum normalisation sigma_8 and the dark energy density Omega_Lambda in the magnitude interval R in [21.5,24.5]. In this magnitude interval the effective number density of source galaxies is n=12.5/sq. arcmin, and their mean redshift is z_m=0.78. To estimate the posterior likelihood we employ the Monte Carlo Markov Chain method. Results. Using the aperture mass dispersion we obtain for the mass power spectrum normalisation sigma_8=0.80 +- 0.10 (1 sigma statistical error) at a fixed matter density Omega_m=0.30 assuming a flat universe with negligible baryon content and marginalising over the Hubble parameter and the uncertainties in the fitted redshift distribution.

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arXiv2006

GaBoDS: The Garching-Bonn Deep Survey V. Data release of the ESO Deep-Public-Survey

Aims. In this paper the optical data of the ESO Deep-Public-Survey observed with the Wide Field Imager and reduced with the THELI pipeline are described. Methods. Here we present 63 fully reduced and stacked images. The astrometric and photometric calibrations are discussed and the properties of the images are compared to images released by the ESO Imaging Survey team covering a subset of our data. Results. These images are publicly released to the community. Our main scientific goals with this survey are to study the high-redshift universe by optically pre-selecting high-redshift objects from imaging data and to use VLT instruments for follow-up spectroscopy as well as weak lensing applications.

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arXiv2005

Searching for galaxy clusters using the aperture mass statistics in 50 VLT fields

Application of the aperture mass (Map-) statistics provides a weak lensing method for the detection of cluster-sized dark matter halos. We present a new aperture filter function and maximise the effectiveness of the Map-statistics to detect cluster-sized halos using analytical models. We then use weak lensing mock catalogues generated from ray-tracing through N-body simulations, to analyse the effect of image treatment on the expected number density of halos. Using the Map-statistics, the aperture radius is typically several arcminutes, hence the aperture often lies partly outside a data field, consequently the signal-to-noise ratio of a halo detection decreases. We study these border effects analytically and by using mock catalogues. We find that the expected number density of halos decreases by a factor of two if the size of a field is comparable to the diameter of the aperture used. We finally report on the results of a weak lensing cluster search applying the Map-statistics to 50 randomly selected fields which were observed with FORS1 at the VLT. Altogether the 50 VLT fields cover an area of 0.64 square degrees. The I-band images were taken under excellent seeing conditions (average seeing 0.6 arcsec.) which results in a high number density of galaxies used for the weak lensing analysis (26/sq.arcmin). In five of the VLT fields, we detect a significant Map-signal which coincides with an overdensity of the light distribution. These detections are thus excellent candidates for shear-selected clusters.

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arXiv2005

The Shapley super-cluster. New X-ray detections and mass distribution

The largest and the deepest super-structure known today is the Shapley super-cluster. This is the sky area with the highest over-density of galaxy clusters and therefore also an ideal region to test the effects of a high density environment on galaxies and on clusters. We performed an X-ray survey of a wide region surrounding the Shapley super-structure. Additionally to previously known super-cluster X-ray members, we identified diffuse X-ray emission from 35 cluster candidates without previous X-ray detection. 21 of them were previously known, optically selected super-cluster members, while the other candidates had not been previously detected in any wavelength range. Optical follow-up observations revealed that at least four of these new candidates also have optical cluster counterparts. The super-cluster shows a slightly flattened and elongated morphology. Clusters outside the central dense core are preferentially located in four perpendicular filaments in a similar way to what is seen in simulations of Large Scale Structure. We measure the cluster number density in the region to be more than one order of magnitude higher than the mean density of rich Abell clusters previously observed at similar Galactic latitudes; this over-density, in the super-cluster outskirts, is mainly due to an excess of low X-ray luminous clusters (with respect to an average population), which leads us to think that the whole region is still accreting low luminosity, small objects from the outskirts. Pushing our total X-ray mass estimate to fainter clusters would drastically increase the total super-cluster mass measure, because of the presence of the rich X-ray low luminosity population.

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arXiv2005

GaBoDS: The Garching-Bonn Deep Survey - III. Lyman-Break Galaxies in the Chandra Deep Field South

We present first results of our search for high-redshift galaxies in deep CCD mosaic images. As a pilot study for a larger survey, very deep images of the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS), taken withWFI@MPG/ESO2.2m, are used to select large samples of 1070 U-band and 565 B-band dropouts with the Lyman-break method. The data of these Lyman-break galaxies are made public as an electronic table. These objects are good candidates for galaxies at z~3 and z~4 which is supported by their photometric redshifts. The distributions of apparent magnitudes and the clustering properties of the two populations are analysed, and they show good agreement to earlier studies. We see no evolution in the comoving clustering scale length from z~3 to z~4. The techniques presented here will be applied to a much larger sample of U-dropouts from the whole survey in near future.

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arXiv2005

Strong and weak lensing united II: the cluster mass distribution of the most X-ray luminous cluster RX J1347.5-1145

We have shown that the cluster-mass reconstruction method which combines strong and weak gravitational lensing data, developed in the first paper in the series, successfully reconstructs the mass distribution of a simulated cluster. In this paper we apply the method to the ground-based high-quality multi-colour data of RX J1347.5-1145, the most X-ray luminous cluster to date. A new analysis of the cluster core on very deep, multi-colour data analysis of VLT/FORS data reveals many more arc candidates than previously known for this cluster. The combined strong and weak lensing reconstruction confirms that the cluster is indeed very massive. If the redshift and identification of the multiple-image system as well as the redshift estimates of the source galaxies used for weak lensing are correct, we determine the enclosed cluster mass in a cylinder to M(<360 h^-1 kpc)= (1.2 +/- 0.3) 10^15 Msun. In addition the reconstructed mass distribution follows the distribution found with independent methods (X-ray measurements, SZ). With higher resolution (e.g. HST imaging data) more reliable multiple imaging information can be obtained and the reconstruction can be improved to accuracies greater than what is currently possible with weak and strong lensing techniques.

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arXiv2005

Strong and weak lensing united I: the combined strong and weak lensing cluster mass reconstruction method

Weak gravitational lensing is considered to be one of the most powerful tools to study the mass and the mass distribution of galaxy clusters. However, the mass-sheet degeneracy transformation has limited its success. We present a novel method for a cluster mass reconstruction which combines weak and strong lensing information on common scales and can, as a consequence, break the mass-sheet degeneracy. We extend the weak lensing formalism to the inner parts of the cluster and combine it with the constraints from multiple image systems. We demonstrate the feasibility of the method with simulations, finding an excellent agreement between the input and reconstructed mass also on scales within and beyond the Einstein radius. Using a single multiple image system and photometric redshift information of the background sources used for weak and strong lensing analysis, we find that we are effectively able to break the mass-sheet degeneracy, therefore removing one of the main limitations on cluster mass estimates. We conclude that with high resolution (e.g. HST) imaging data the method can more accurately reconstruct cluster masses and their profiles than currently existing lensing techniques.

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arXiv2005

The dark clump near Abell 1942: dark matter halo or statistical fluke?

Weak lensing surveys provide the possibility of identifying dark matter halos based on their total matter content rather than just the luminous matter content. On the basis of two sets of observations carried out with the CFHT, Erben et al. (2000) presented the first candidate dark clump, i.e. a dark matter concentration identified by its significant weak lensing signal without a corresponding galaxy overdensity or X-ray emission. We present a set of HST mosaic observations which confirms the presence of an alignment signal at the dark clump position. The signal strength, however, is weaker than in the ground-based data. It is therefore still unclear whether the signal is caused by a lensing mass or is just a chance alignment. We also present Chandra observations of the dark clump, which fail to reveal any significant extended emission. A comparison of the ellipticity measurements from the space-based HST data and the ground-based CFHT data shows a remarkable agreement on average, demonstrating that weak lensing studies from high-quality ground-based observations yield reliable results.

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arXiv2005

GaBoDS: The Garching-Bonn Deep Survey; IV. Methods for the Image reduction of multi-chip Cameras

We present our image processing system for the reduction of optical imaging data from multi-chip cameras. In the framework of the Garching Bonn Deep Survey (GaBoDS; Schirmer et al. 2003) consisting of about 20 square degrees of high-quality data from WFI@MPG/ESO 2.2m, our group developed an imaging pipeline for the homogeneous and efficient processing of this large data set. Having weak gravitational lensing as the main science driver, our algorithms are optimised to produce deep co-added mosaics from individual exposures obtained from empty field observations. However, the modular design of our pipeline allows an easy adaption to different scientific applications. Our system has already been ported to a large variety of optical instruments and its products have been used in various scientific contexts. In this paper we give a thorough description of the algorithms used and a careful evaluation of the accuracies reached. This concerns the removal of the instrumental signature, the astrometric alignment, photometric calibration and the characterisation of final co-added mosaics. In addition we give a more general overview on the image reduction process and comment on observing strategies where they have significant influence on the data quality.

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